Dean Walks a Tightrope Over Positions on Gun Control
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JODI WILGOREN
ASHUA, N.H., Oct. 30 — Back when Howard Dean was running for governor of Vermont in 1992, he told the National Rifle Association in a signed questionnaire that he opposed any restrictions on private ownership of assault weapons.
These days, running for the Democratic presidential nomination and appealing to a very different electorate from that of his small, largely rural state, Dr. Dean assures audiences that he firmly supports the assault weapons ban enacted under President Bill Clinton in 1994 though vigorously opposing any further federal regulation of guns.
Dr. Dean declined a request for an interview on Thursday. But a spokeswoman said there was no contradiction between his current position and what he told the N.R.A. in its 1992 questionnaire, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times by aides to a rival Democratic candidate who is a stronger advocate of gun control.
The spokeswoman, Tricia Enright, said Dr. Dean's answers 11 years ago applied only to a state ban, though in fact the question at issue specifically referred to both federal and state law. Ms. Enright also pointed out that the question defined assault weapons in a way that encompassed semiautomatic rifles and shotguns commonly used by hunters in Vermont, while the federal ban applied to 19 specific weapons typically used in street violence.
But Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the N.R.A., said the guns banned by the 1994 law "weren't that much different from firearms that are used in hunting and competition." Mr. Arulanandam accused Dr. Dean of "schizophrenia," saying he had taken positions friendly to the rifle association as governor but had changed since becoming a candidate for president.
This turn of events captures the difficulty that gun control poses for Dr. Dean and the other Democratic contenders as they struggle with an issue that many say helped cost their party the White House and a handful of Congressional seats in 2000.
Polls show overwhelming support among Democratic primary voters for federal regulation of gun ownership. But that is not the case among general-election voters as a whole. Dr. Dean himself has said that Al Gore would be president today were it not for support of gun control. Like many other Democrats, he is mindful of Mr. Gore's losses in the 2000 election in states where gun control is not popular, like Tennessee, Florida, Arkansas and West Virginia.
In one example of the issue's delicate nature, another Democratic candidate, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, having declared his support on Sunday for reauthorization of the assault weapons ban, will be in Iowa on Friday for what his campaign hopes will be a well-photographed pheasant hunt. And in a forum at the University of New Hampshire on Wednesday, yet another contender, Gen. Wesley K. Clark, made a point of talking in great detail about his childhood in a home where his father kept guns.
But of all the candidates, Democrats say, Dr. Dean may have the trickiest road to walk: trying, after establishing himself in Vermont as highly skeptical of gun control, to appeal to a decidedly liberal Democratic electorate.
At stop after stop, Dr. Dean says that gun control is an issue that should be left to the states but that he supports the central federal gun-control measures adopted during the Clinton administration: the 1994 assault weapons ban and the Brady Bill, which mandated a waiting period on the purchase of handguns.
At a debate before the Children's Defense Fund in Washington last spring, Dr. Dean said: "I support the assault weapons ban, I support reauthorization of the assault weapons ban." He tells audiences here and in Iowa that he supports the ban "because I never met a hunter who needed an AK-47 to shoot a deer."
But he appears to have taken another position in 1992, when he was seeking the N.R.A.'s support of his run for governor. On question after question posed by the rifle association, he voiced opposition to various gun control measures, including state legislation to impose a waiting period for buying handguns.
The questionnaire also asked: "Semiautomatic rifles, shotguns and pistols, currently labeled `assault weapons,' are commonly used in hunting and target competition, including the National Matches and the Olympics. Current federal and state law allows a lawful citizen to possess semiautomatic rifles, shotguns and pistols. Would you support legislation to restrict the private possession of these firearms?"
Dr. Dean checked the answer that read, "No, I would oppose restrictions on semiautomatic firearms."
Ms. Enright, his spokeswoman, saw no contradiction. "It's not a federal answer," she said of his response to the questionnaire. "This is a Vermont questionnaire in 1992. In 1994, he said he'll support a federal law. Where's the inconsistency?"
The N.R.A., which gave Dr. Dean its highest possible rating throughout his 12-year career as governor, declined to provide copies of the questionnaires he had filled out over the years.
Jay Carson, a spokesman for Dr. Dean, said the candidate would not participate in an N.R.A. survey this year because, Mr. Carson said, the group will ultimately back President Bush for re-election.
A number of Democrats have pressed party officials to stop emphasizing gun control issues, asserting that there are few legislative gains left to be made and that the political cost to the party is too high.
"Guns are a good issue for Democrats in many urban areas and in many suburban areas, if not all suburban areas," said Howard Wolfson, former executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "But they have not proved helpful, in my opinion — though I have friends who will yell at me for saying this — in rural areas, or among rural Democrats."
Campaigning in Wapello, Iowa, the other day, Dr. Dean made a similar argument, saying, "We've got to get guns off the national agenda — it is not a national problem, it's a state problem — so we don't lose 20 percent of union members who vote against their economic interests for that one issue."
Dr. Dean said that one year, his home state had just five homicides, "so we don't need any gun control."
"Let New York and New Jersey and California have all the gun control they want," he often says in campaign stops. "But don't impose it on Montana or Vermont or Iowa, where we don't need it." |
